Paengi-beoseot-jeon (Enoki Mushroom Pancake) · Im Seong-geun

Cut the root block off both packs of enoki (250 g), rinse them once, and dry them thoroughly — a salad spinner or a clean towel, patted, not wrung.

💡 Dry mushrooms are the whole battle. Wet enoki steams under the egg and the pancake turns out limp and grey instead of crisp-edged.

Finely chop the 2 Cheongyang chilies and 2 red chilies.

Crack 5 eggs into a bowl and beat them until the whites and yolks are one uniform colour with no ropey strands left.

Add 2 tbsp matsul, 2 tbsp saeujeot and 3 tbsp flour to the eggs and whisk until there are no lumps of flour.

💡 The salted shrimp is the seasoning — there is no salt in this recipe at all. It brings savoury depth that plain salt cannot, which is why he does not substitute it.

Pass the egg mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl, then stir the chopped chilies in.

💡 Sieving is not fussiness. It catches the chalazae, the flour lumps and the coarse bits of shrimp, and it is why the finished pancake reads as a smooth sheet rather than a scrambled one.

Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat and add a thin film of oil — enough to gloss the surface, not to pool.

Lay the enoki into the pan in a ring, fanning them so the strands overlap into one continuous wheel that covers the base.

💡 Take your time here — this arrangement IS the pancake. Gaps in the wheel become holes the egg falls straight through, and the disc will tear when you flip it.

Drizzle 1 tbsp of oil over the top of the mushrooms.

Pour the egg mixture in starting from the centre, slowly, letting it spread outward through the mushrooms until it reaches the rim.

💡 Pouring from the centre lets the batter find its own way through the strands. Pour it around the edge instead and it floods under the mushrooms, lifting your careful wheel into a raft.

Wait, without touching it, until the egg on top loses its liquid shine and just begins to set.

Turn the heat down to medium and cook 30 seconds — his figure. The underside should be set enough to hold together as one sheet.

Flip the pancake, count 30 seconds — again his figure — then turn the heat off and let the residual heat in the pan finish it.

💡 Killing the heat is deliberate. Egg keeps cooking off the flame, and 30 seconds of coasting is the difference between custardy and rubbery.

Invert a large plate over the pan, then turn pan and plate over together so the pancake lands whole and face-up.

Cut into wedges at the table and eat hot — this one goes soft as it cools.